


Not anymore, not enough

by memoriesoflastwords



Category: Children of Blood and Bone - Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Virtue and Vengeance - Tomi Adeyemi, Legacy of Orïsha - Tomi Adeyemi
Genre: Bodyswap, F/M, Kidnapping, Sea, Ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:08:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27007864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memoriesoflastwords/pseuds/memoriesoflastwords
Summary: Bodyswap for day 14 of Writober! I sadly, and honestly, doubt I'll manage to keep going after day 15, but let's give it a try.After the final happenings of CVV, Inan wakes up somewhere weird.
Relationships: Zélie Adebola/Inan Olúborí, Zélie Adebola/Roën
Kudos: 3
Collections: Writober di Fanwriter.it, Writober2020 di Fanwriter.it





	Not anymore, not enough

When he woke, at first, he didn’t sense anything different than usual. It was not the first time he woke feeling off, out of place in his own body – ever since he had discovered the magic in his veins, ever since he had started hiding the white streak of hair, he had started waking with a sense of non-belonging. Not like he had anyone he could talk about it anymore. Amari was far away. Zélie still felt betrayed, and rightly so. His mother was not the person he could talk about magic with. She only cared about power, and his weakness was something to hide at all costs from the whole world, and from his own eyes too. What you don’t see, after all, doesn’t exist.

He tried to turn around, to get out of the bed and ask – no, order, his mother wanted for him to start ordering things – for a glass of fresh water. When he turned, though, he didn’t find the pillows he expected to, nor did he find his legs stuck in the blankets. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t find the lights of his room, the gold of the furniture.  
When the managed to turn around, he found his body stuck between other two, and when he opened his eyes, he only found darkness. He blinked once or twice, trying to understand where in the palace that place could be. The prisons, he was sure of it, didn’t smell like the sea. Nor did the move.

No, that couldn’t be. He couldn’t be at sea. He remembered the attack and he remembered pleading for Zélie to take his life, he remembered darkness, then, but he didn’t remember being kidnapped. Why was he there, then? Why was he someplace else than the palace?

“Zélie?”

He turned his head around, looking more for Zélie than for the voice that had called her. So she was there? They were together, at last? Was he going to have a chance, one more, to tell her how sorry he was? He really was, that was no game, no lie. He was incredibly, horribly sorry, he felt guilt eating his insides bite by bite.

“Zélie, look at me!”

But where was she? Despite how quickly his eyes were getting used to the darkness, he couldn’t see her anywhere in the room – was that a room, or simply a section of the boat they were on? – or understand why no one was acknowledging his presence. Friend or foe, he still was standing in the way of the guy who was talking, looking for Zélie. Before he could ask anything, say anything, he found his chin locked between the young man’s index and thumb.

“Zélie, what’s going on?”

“Let me go!” that was all he, at first, could do, his stomach held tight by the grip of fear and confusion.

The confusion in the young man’s eyes was one and the same with his own. He got up only to falter, unsure on his own feet as he looked for assistance in the moving walls of the boat.

“You have been knocked off for days. You should rest.” the young man shook his head. “I won’t touch you, Zélie, but come back down here. There’s no point wasting your energy when we don’t know what’s ahead.”

“But…” he looked around, still searching for Zélie’s eyes in the darkness. He couldn’t find any sign of her.

“Please.”

He did. Despite not understanding what was going on, he did get back down. Maybe the young man was blind – but that wouldn’t have made any sense, since he had so quickly gotten a hold of his chin despite the darkness. Well, not blind, but maybe short-sighted. That was a solution of sorts. That was reasonable.

But as he got down, he found his reflection in a little puddle of dark water. And despite the reflection definitely not looking like his own body, he knew in the very exact moment he looked his eyes with her own that there was no hoax in what he saw. That in some way, his soul and mind were locked in Zélie’s body. Which logically meant…

He shook his head. He couldn’t imagine Zélie in his body, Zélie in his place, Zélie pretending – because he knew that was what she was doing – to be him in a palace of enemies, Zélie accepting the affection of the people she dreaded.

“Where are we?” he asked, with the voice he loved, with the voice of the girl who dreaded him.

The young man, still hidden in the shadow, hesitated, then shook his head. “At sea. I don’t know where, precisely. I don’t know where they’re taking us.”

“They, who?” the disbelief in his voice was real. Could that have been one of his mother’s plans, one of her many possible scenarios? Let them into the palace, capture them, send them away, to a cage or a slaughterhouse alike?

“Pirates, I guess?” the shape was still, but he could still read doubt in his pose. “The Queen’s men? I have no idea, Zélie. And I think this time we’ll just have to wait and hope for the best.”

“I don’t like it.” he let the words out without second thought.

“Neither do I.” the young man offered him – no, Zélie – his hand. “Come, it’s warmer down here. I promise we’ll figure this out, but for now the best you can do is rest. We have no use for you if you lose all your strength planning.”

He was joking. Inan remember how good it felt to be able to joke with Zélie and make her laugh so hard he cracked, too, and only managed to stop once his chest started hurting. The young man had to mean something to Zélie, didn’t he, if he could joke and play around with her? The thought of what he had lost picking his father and duty first, putting a world he didn’t want to rule before Zélie, hurt more than the uncertainty of her wellbeing. Because he wouldn’t have had to worry about that, hadn’t he betrayed her.

He shook his head, slowly. “I’ll just look for some light.” he said, and moved away, deeming it impossible to be in someone’s loving arms, lying despite it being a lie as sweet as sugar. He didn’t know Zélie, not anymore, not enough to know what she might have wanted. So he moved away, despite the young man’s hurt looking on Zélie’s back, and sat among other bodies he didn’t know the names or faces of.

Zélie was presumably at the palace, with his mother, presumably pretending to be him.

What he had to do was behave like she would have wanted, like she would have done. Protect her people, find a way back home. And in doing so, maybe Inan would have also found the way back to Zélie’s heart – or simply, he added, in a painful thought, remembering the small laughter in the young man’s mouth, to her forgiveness.

**Author's Note:**

> I am honestly in denial as I'm waiting for the third book.
> 
> If you'd like to support my ongoing project, consider donating to ko-fi.com/warsgospel ^^


End file.
